October 12, 2007

So the Denver Public School District gave kids health reports to take home, and one child discovered that her weight put her in the "overweight" category:

"The part that upset her the most as she started reading it, there it stated that she was overweight and she started to cry saying, 'Mom, that school tells me I'm fat.' So, it was very heart wrenching," said Flaurette Martinez....

"My daughter is big boned," said Martinez....

"If she would have dropped this letter, a student may have found it and may have exposed it to other students," said Martinez. "Anything specific to the child should be mailed. It should not be given to the child."...

Martinez says that decision is causing her daughter emotional distress.

That would be the decision of the school to send the notice home with the child... not the decision of the mother to tell the world that her daughter is fat (and traumatized).

Here's what the Mom should have said: Do you think you have a healthy diet? What has the pediatrician said about your weight? These things matter more than a number sent home by the school. Then mother and daughter hug, and the credits on the after-school special on ABC roll.

I would have focused first on the word "overweight" and talked about what it meant and then about what we should be eating. Let's weed all the junk food out of the kitchen and go shopping for everything healthy. Then let's go for a walk and talk about things we could make with that would taste great. Let's enjoy cooking dinner together and talk about positive things. By all means, don't reinforce the child's crying over seeing something true but negative. Do something positive! And don't look for new forms of denial like "big boned" and "not that fat." Make it a character and health building experience. It's a teaching moment. What did this mother teach? Whining, blaming others, and denial.

Dear Ms. Martinez:This health notice is to inform you that your daughter is being parented by a neurotic attention-seeking helicopter mother who would rather see herself on 9NEWS than protect her own daughter's privacy. Sincerely,Denver Public School District Spokesperson, Alex Sanchez

I kinda doubt that the daughter or her age group watches the nightly news casts.

With all the obsessing about eating disorders in teenagers, it seems counter intuitive for schools to play the Fat Police and screen little kids' weight in elementary school. Quite frankly, maybe the school employees need some public embarrasment.

Mom also appears to be 'big boned.'But why is the onus on schools to conduct health exams of this nature? Schools have enough to contend with. Shouldn't annual health certs be required by the school from a family physician/primary care giver? Then the doctor could deal with the 'big boned' issue.

Good observation about the mother making her daughter's traumatizing experience a news story. LOL

However, I would agree that the notices should be sent by mail. But the notices ARE addressing a real problem, which is overweight in a generation of kids that has seen a sharp rise in childhood diabetes in recent years, obesity, and poor dietary habits. I know that I received these reports on my own kids last year, and it made me think twice about how close one son was to being overweight and how to prevent problems.

But, again, the mom is right -- send the notices by mail, not home with the children. A person feels the stigma of being labeled "chubby" or "big-boned" even if she later proves to have just been in an awkward transition period with her weight/height.

Witness the difference between Madison Mutt's suggestions and Althouse's suggestions. Madison Mutt refuses to deal with the problem (that the girl is fat (oops, big boned)). Althouse deals directly with the problem.

There, you have it in a snapshot folks.

While the credits on the after-school special on ABC roll, you and I have to pony up our hard earned tax dollars to pay for this little overweight poodle's self-generated health issues for the rest of her life.

If it sounds like I've lost patience with the fat folks and their apologists in America, your hearing is accurate.

1) With the increasing intrusiveness of businesses, Medicare and insurance companies, adults will get the same letters.

2) Weigh-ins will be mandatory.

3) Doctors, now being "responsible" for demonstrating success in their care of patients (Pay for Performance) will fire patients who do not lose weight, give up smoking, or achieve good lipid levels (and this is already occurring).

4) You will be required to prove you go to the gym or attend an exercise class 3 times per week (Blue Cross has a soft version set up which reduces the health club fee by number of times you participate). The shift from soft incentive to coercion will be slow but definite.

5) Drug testing will be expanded.

6) Local and state governments will feel compelled to intervene in city planning and automobile use to combat obesity. Options include soft forms of neighborhood design that encourage walking (letting small stores locate in neighborhoods again), to hard efforts that tax personal car use after a certain volume.

This shows the futility of the nanny state or the nanny school. Isabel and her mother are both fat and will, given their state of denial, grow fatter. It is not the school's business, no matter how well meaning.

Next we will hear of the ACLU lawsuit, money damages to salve Issy's wounded psyche, and sensitivity training in race and BMI prejudice.

Yes, the problem is her denial of her disgusting and unhealthy habits, which others have to subsidize through public health care costs. Perhaps her sense of shame over dropping her obesity designation letter will teach her to be more careful in other areas of life, such as carelessly dropping unhealthy food into her quivering gullet. We must break her denial. She is not big-boned. She is not normal. She is not healthy. It is not biologically determined. I am not a bigot. But she is fat. And the fatness must stop.

Yes, it is. The school will have to pay for larger seats and larger classrooms and wider doors and get rid of perfectly good buildings built 20 years ago because the staircases are now too narrow. They should pay more in taxes, these free-riding jerks. And the parents should be fined.

This sort of thing treats normal and underweight children differently than overweight children, certainly a voilation of one equal protection statute or another.

Why are only overweight children given letters? Why no letters telling Mrs. Smith that Susie is a bit underweight and that the Smith household needs to up its consumption of Ho-Hos and Ding Dongs? How will thin children feel about this neglect?

And those poor children who weigh exactly what the government says they shoud, what about them? Aren't they entitled to a letter? What would it say? "Dear Mrs. Smith, Susie weighs exactly what she shoud. In the name of God, don't do a thing!"

Is there a federal department in charge of childrens' weight? There should be, and ideal weights need to be gender normed, and also adjusted by geography, average metabolic rate, and religious background. Seventh Day Adventists, who are vegetarians, shouldn't be normed with Catholics (who invented the fish fry).

Thank God schools no longer need to focus on better reading and math skills, and can focus on children's weight.

I think the best way to pay for the newly emerging focus on children's weight will be to divert funding from phys ed and afterschool athletics. Those doggone healthy and athletic kids have been getting a disproportionate amount of funding anyhow.

And in the end, the best way for us all to lose weight is to move to Cuba.

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Cienfuegos, Cuba and Loyola University studied the effects of the economic crisis of Cuba in 1989-2000.

Because of the fall of the USSR, they lost Soviet money ($5B annually), and the remainder of their economy being the typical socialist sinkhole, people began to starve. Calorie intake fell from 2,899 kcal in 1988 to 1,863 kcal in 1993. Food intake thus dropped below nutritional requirements.

Unknown to most people is that Cubans get monthly food rations from the government. ("Under the communist country's 45-year-old universal ration system, Cubans get a heavily subsidized monthly food basket of beans, rice, potatoes, eggs, a little meat and other goods.")

Cars (and gas) were now completely unaffordable, and lacking a viable public transport system, bicycles and walking became the primary means of transportation. Obesity prevalence decreased from 14.3% in 1991 to 7.2% in 1995.

Following this, there were substantial declines in cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and all-cause mortality. As a result, obesity declined, as did deaths attributed to diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke.

The researchers neglected to report (or were unaware of) an epidemic of blindness and peripheral neuropathy due to a lack of vitamins, affecting over 33,000 people.

The paper drew this conclusion from the mass near-starvation induced by poverty:

"Population-wide approaches designed to reduce caloric intake and increase physical activity, without affecting nutritional sufficiency, might be best suited for the prevention of cardiovascular disease and diabetes."

I kid you not. These people are actually serious, that the US should consider the same approach here. (i.e., "long-term population-wide interventions by encouraging physical activity and the reduction of caloric intake") And it's true: Starve people or rats, and they live much longer.

I would like to have seen the school system put the message in a more positive light. Rather than simply pointing out the high BMI (which is a flawed indicator of obesity anyway), the system could have pointed out that they were concerned that her physical activity levels were not up to healthy standards. The message could have emphasized the importance of diet and exercise more than merely saying "Your daughter is fat."

Still, as the girl is chubby, you'd imagine she probably gets teased about it at school; she doesn't need confirmation from the school.

However, I must question the flawed logic of an obviously-overweight mother using the term "big-boned." There's no such thing! I can't remember which comedian said "When in the hell have you ever seen a fat skeleton?" but boy, that applies to that household! Who knew De-Nile was the river that ran through Denver?

It's called assimilation. This country doesn't like chubby little kids. So many Hispanic families are so pround of their little gorditas and gorditos. We need to bombard these people with images of thin attractive models and pressure the Hispanic community to adopt the true standard of beauty that all real Americans hold dear.

Why is it any of the school's business what kids weigh (or anything else about their personal lives), unless it directly interferes with their learning or the learning of others? It's way past time for the losers employed by public school districts to butt OUT of the lives of their students.

It’s all about choices, the mother choices to live a certain way. You know, I think your right; it shouldn’t be the schools job to do this. I think it should be the parent(s) job and responsibility not to give excuses to why the child is fat.

BMI for children: http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/bmi/childrens_BMI/about_childrens_BMI.htm Unlike for adults, the children's interpretation takes age and gender into account. To be considered overweight, Isabel had be at the 95th percentile or higher based on height, weight, age and sex. "At risk for overweight" is 85-under 95. "Baby fat" can be accounted for under that category, or even under the higher end of healthy (5th-under 85th percentile). Underweight is less that 5th percentile. There is no separate "at risk for underweight" category.

Of course she ok with her daughter's weight, it somehow justifies her weight problem. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want a bunch of weight police looking for fat people out there; but the paper that was sent home was just for information, Right?

three of which required my signature, and not one but four different "book" clubs....

What one child brought home from elementary school today.

Excluding the book clubs (which amounted to about 20 pieces of paper), that's 10 pieces of paper x 200 students x 5 elementary schools in the town...that's 10,000 pieces of paper...in on day...This is definitely a source of global warming....

As long as the US are going to have sChips, vChips and potato chips, then I will happily support letters to send home stating whether is a kid is overweight, underweight or perfectweight. This big boned mother might be insulted that her kid felt insulted but I am sure she will be the first to run to the gubmit for a free healthcare handout when her kid starts showing signs of diabetes.

Okay, lady, you don't want a letter? Fine, we can dispense with the letters if everyone agrees that we can immediately imprison parents of morbidly obese children. We can put those parents next to those parents of chronically truant children and those parents who are straw purchasers for their jihad-motivated kids.

The US is graduating kids from high school not only obese but with a host of psychological problems due to circumstances that were never under their control. Then it becomes the teen's responsibility to lose massive amounts of weight, fix their heads and learn about nutrition. The blame lays squarely on parents' shoulders, big boned or otherwise. This current child obesity epidemic is absolutely unacceptable.

Second, the school is not qualified to make these judgments. BMI is meaningless for children. Repeated scientific studies have found no correlation between BMI as children and weight as adults. (Some studies have found a correlation with the truly obese--those at the far end of the bell curve--but other studies have contradicted this.)

The weight of children as they grow varies widely. I was a runt in seventh grade and still pretty skinny and underweight until my mid-twenties. My oldest daughter, by contrast, was a tubby in seventh grade and is now normal weight at nineteen (and she eats normally.)

The irony of this nonsense is that it's very likely resulting in an increase of bulemia and anorexia. The bigger irony is that the underweight are measurably less healthy than the overweight. (Science is a bitch, isn't it?)

As I said before, of course she (The mother) is going to be ok with it. It makes her feel better; (whatever, I’ll drop it.) and just pudgy, I won’t even answer with that with another synonym just to make it sound nicer. Look, even you (Mary) said that it is the job of the school to notify social workers cases of abuse, I would submit to you that overfeeding (or consistently feeding poor nutritional food) as abuse…… Something should be done about that. (Pause….pause…..pause.) Because it would be if was underfeeding. Also, the school should not have to mail these letters out by snail mail, E-mail possibly, but that would never happen. (Too many excuses for not having an e-mail address these days, and the expense of having one. Wow! But the child is going home anyways. So many people sending those tax dollars. What, because if they read it might hurt their feelings? Come on.

Look, even you (Mary) said that it is the job of the school to notify social workers cases of abuse, I would submit to you that overfeeding (or consistently feeding poor nutritional food) as abuse…… Something should be done about that. (Pause….pause…..pause.)

Set up a volunteer program on your own time and dime. The taxpayers are done funding this nonsense. If you can't see that now, just wait a few years. Done, I'm telling you.

Take care of your own kids and don't expect the schools to do your jobs, parents. If you're ok with the kid being fat or skinny, fine. If it's not immediately life-threatening, the government is wise to stay out of yet another aspect of childrearing.

Look. The mom *is* fat. This doesn't mean that she's "okay" with it. It *may* mean that she understands just how much it's all a mind game.

I'm fat. The thing is that in grade school and high school I was *not* fat. But in a world where size 2 is the standard, if you wear a size 7 you're a cow. I was a cow. I knew I was a cow with every fiber of my being. Heifer. Through and through.

Psychologically the belief and self-identity as a fat person makes it that much harder to make positive changes in positive ways. Is it by accident that anorexia and bulimia are the problems that they are?

The mom is fat. The girl is chubby. Telling the girl that she should feel bad about herself is not going to promote a healthy lifestyle. Maybe mom knows this first hand. Maybe she knows that feeling good about herself is what her daughter needs to avoid the fat-identity trap so when she starts growing *up* she's got a good chance of not growing *out* every bit as much.

It kills me to know that my daughter, only a couple inches taller than me (5'2"), weighs what I weighed when I was teased for being fat. Her stomach muscles show! She's athletic and fit and under 120 pounds. She grew *out* of my old BDU's that I wore when I *knew* I was a cow. She's supposed to lose 8 pounds for boxing (to get below 110). She's not a size 2. She's a size 7.

I've *known* I was fat all my life and this... yeah, the kid is a little chubby... but this... garbage I hear from people who think she should just accept she's fat and shape up makes me annoyed. What do you know about it? Why should she be made to feel there is something wrong with her?

Maybe the school busybodies will succeed and another teenage girl will become bulimic.

Yay, them.

If the girl is lucky, she'll just accept her fat fate.

They've set her up for one or the other and made it that much more unlikely that she'll find the healthy middle ground.

Oh, come on. In the real world, no one thinks you're fat when you're a size 7... or even a size 10 for that matter.

Bullshit.

Seriously, all this wringing of the hands and jabbering about an "obesity epidemic" isn't about the 5 percentile at the end of the bell curve, but anyone with a BMI over 25. That includes an awful lot of women size 6 and up.

(A big reason for this is that true obesity in women has declined in the past 15 years. The Obesity Paradox doesn't help--this is the fact that overweight people are healthier and live longer than underweight or even "normal weight" people.)

PS. I'm normal weight, so I'm not trying to justify myself. I'm just really annoyed at the total lack of science employed by the anti-fat freaks.

Synova, what article did you read? The paper sent home with the kid said the her BMI was out of range for healthy child in her age group.

If everybody sweeps the problem under the carpet then the parents and kids will assume nothing needs to change. Arkansas spearheaded the program with the letters and it appears to be working, sort of. The Arkansas kids haven't gotten any fatter, their weight seem to be holding steady which in the US is the measure of obesity success. Arkansas parents admit they were a bit stunned and insulted when the program started but it did help them identify the challenge and make positive changes in their children's diets.

If I had my way the schools would have gym class twice per day, there would be nutrition class in every single grade. The food pyramid would be memorized by age 8 and there would be class trips to the supermarket. Every kid would receive a decent fitness assessment yearly. Ketchup would no longer be a vegetable. I'd rather have my tax dollars pay for that than this schip and Medicaid business, which is clearly a big waste of my money.

No doubt, Ann, you wouldn't have been calling me thunder thighs in high school either. Though I did have a *girl* friend explain to me that thighs shouldn't touch when feet and knees are pressed together... so that wasn't even a stupid boy calling names. It was the popular standard of "fat."

Maybe, who knows, this happened in the 10 years between the time you and I were in school?

Joe has it right.

And Cham, if kids are all the same weight they were... what good was the program in Arkansas? More physical activity and knowledge about nutrition is good but *not* if the focus is on weight reduction. The focus needs to be on health, fitness, and energy.

I know people for whom size 2 is entirely normal and healthy. "Big bones" isn't true so much as the fact that on other people, small bones or not, a size 2 is massively unhealthy. Thin != Health. Health = Health. Children should be taught *health*. They should not be taught a standard of thinness.

When I was in school we had the president's physical fitness thing. That had it's flaws as well, but a program that encouraged progress would be better, and this is what I was actually interested in when I was in school (and desperately unfit, but not at *all* fat, despite school yard taunts). Comparing to others was depressing and self-defeating but activities where I could gauge my own progress against myself were encouraging and fun.

In school I was interested in weight training. Any other conditioning that had the same ability to track progress would have been appealing. As an adult I've started to take karate these last two years and that also is a me vs. me activity.

If people really do want to help it would be good to understand that getting picked last for gym class team sports is the opposite of help.

Yeah, I know the pyramid wrong but it is the government's favorite chart and you could probably figure the Ag Department would probably throw in a few bucks for the nutrition program if the schools used it. I do have an issue with that 11 servings of grains, but maybe to them a serving is a thimbleful. The Ag Dept spent 20 years working on it, it will take them another 50 to correct it. If the kids even attempted to use it their nutrition would improve, it is better than eating high fructose corn syrup coated everything.

I was at Wal-Mart a couple of weeks ago in the food section and watched a mother allowing her 10 year old daughter to do all the food choosing. Every box the girl put into the cart was pink.

The only proper response by this mother to the direct faces of the girl's teacher, school principal, and school board members:

"Mind your own fucking business when it comes to telling my child anything about their weight".

If that mother needs help, she can call me and, as I have experience in getting MOFO idiot "well meaning"school boards to reverse course - it's in the papers, and I've never lost - I'll be happy to educate those thoughtless, self-righteous it-takes-a-village-to control-your life-and-future imbeciles on what a public school institution is supposed to be doing.

"And sweetheart, it's won't be polite to call your teacher and health aide 'MS. Prejudiced Asshole' even if she is one. But do tell me and the nice Mr' Lawyer we will be visiting next week everything else she has been telling you and the other students is right or wrong."

Madison Mutt refuses to deal with the problem (that the girl is fat (oops, big boned)).

I don't think a person has to be all that cynical to think "just because a public school bureaucrat says something doesn't mean it is likely to be true".

The formulas for ideal body weight tend to be overly simplistic and not account for differences in body frame. I've even seen cases where a person was classified as "fat" because they had a lot of *muscle* mass for their height.

That being said, any mother who goes running to the news when the school sends her a mildly off-putting note is pretty obviously a nut.

Rare is the time that I don't agree with pretty much everything that you write here at Althouse. This is one of those times.

That mother did a service to all freedom loving American's.

It won't stop with obesity. It will become a lifestyle-controlled society sooner than you think, especially if Hillary has a go at it. Overnight changes, no. But human nature what it is and the desire of liberals to social engineer - Al Gore wanted to abolish cul-de-sacs for crying out loud - a stand should be made whenever possible against the Central Planning intentions.

Instead of weight and diversity training, make - and I mean put every concerned ounce of effort - into raising the academic prowess of our continually free falling academic achievement levels in this nation's public schools. Skinny and beautiful but second-rate educated citizens is a sure way to ending America's prosperity, liberty and "pursuit of happiness".

This whole thing was stupid. Hi my name is isabel and that was my mom who was on the news. everything u guys are saying is highly unintentional and rude. I think you all should keep your comments to ur self, for me and my mothers sake.sincerely , The martinez family.